Well folks, we’ve got a doozy for you this weekend, as our weekly multi-review tackles a three pack from a wholly different source. Today we turn to the folks from Synapse Cinema, who sent out a sweet set of three Japanese horror titles: Horrors of Malformed Men, Battle Girl: The Living Dead In Tokyo Bay, and The World Sinks Except Japan.

Horrors of Malformed Men follows a man who may be going insane…or he may have just experienced something too horrifying to be regarded as anything but the ravings of a lunatic. He’ll chase down his own lookalike in a bid to find out why he even exists, but along the way, he’ll find terrifying things, including a man who takes human beings and turns them into the titular malformed men.

Considering we start out in what looks like an insane asylum where a woman is trying to stab a guy while topless women jump around the attempted murder scene, you know we’re in for a real doozy right here. And when you further consider that this is a work by no less than Japanese monster of horror Teruo Ishii (and right now, Japanese horror buffs are either clapping their hands in glee or groaning in resignation at what we’re about to see), you can figure this will be no less than a serious piece of work. Ishii’s work has always been a little on the weird side, even for Japanese horror, and this one will be no exception. Plenty of things won’t make sense, and more will horrify you beyond all reason, but if you want some serious splatter and you don’t mind being bored for large chunks of a movie (or a couple unusual laughs, strange beyond words for an Ishii title), you’ll have all you need and more right here.

Battle Girl: The Living Dead in Tokyo Bay is pretty much exactly what the box says, as a meteor lands in Japan and forms a shield of fog around the island, as well as raising the dead on the island. Now a host of zombies is roaming the country, and about to be used for world domination by a corrupt general. But only K-ko, a special agent armed with a bladed, bulletproof leather suit, can shut down the operation and bring life back to Tokyo.

This is one of those great bizarre action / horror hybrids that Japan seems particularly enamored with. Basically, if you liked Junk or Assault Girls, you should find a welcome home right here. If you like your movies to make sense, meanwhile, you may just want to keep right on moving. This is going to strain logic almost gleefully, so take care not to get too deep over your head.

The World Sinks Except Japan gives us an unusual premise–basically, the world has become Waterworld…except now, Dry Land is Japan. With the bulk of the world’s land now under Japanese control, the rest of the world tries to assimilate as best they can, and refugees that fail to blend in sufficiently are arrested. But with another seismic catastrophe in the works, will Japan emerge  near as well as they did previously?

It’s bizarre to say the least–think the John Travolta film White Man’s Burden times a million–and it’s going to really make you think about the nature of geopolitics on Earth. Of course, there’s quite a bit left unexplained (what happened to the various boats out there, for one, though from the look of the destruction they might have been taken out), but what’s here is sufficient enough to spark a whole lot of beer-and-pizza night discussions. It’s weird, it’s wholly unprecedented that I can think of, and it’s something very much worth watching.

And so, there you go–a slate of three great titles from the folks at Synapse Films!

Man, but the folks at Lions Gate have been putting out a lot of terrific titles of late, and though there’s a fair chance you’ve already seen a couple of these, with Halloween coming out, it’s a great time to cover some of the stuff that makes for a great party. And the crew out at Lions Gate sent over copies of Scary Movie 2, Scary Movie 3, and The Crow for us to cover.

Scary Movie 2 rejoins the crew from the original Scary Movie, and this time they’re off to college. And while they’re there, they’ve enrolled in a study geared toward studying sleep patterns. But the study turns out to be of something entirely different, and this is going to put the crew in some reasonably deep trouble at the hands of a sociopathic professor and his belligerently-abled disabled assistant.

If you have a tolerance for–or enjoyment of–movie parodies laden with dick and fart jokes, then you may rest assured that you will be very, very well taken care of here. In fact, it’s safe to say that your enjoyment of Scary Movie 2 will largely hinge on your tolerance for or enjoyment of dick and fart jokes because that’s primarily what’s in here. Of course, horror buffs should have a pleasant time spotting all the in-jokes and subreferences–the bit with Ray and the clown doll is a riot–but there’s going to be plenty in the crass and juvenile department for anyone.

Scary Movie 3 follows the events of Scary Movie 2, sufficiently so to put them in the working world. And while some of the cast has found jobs and is out to set up their lives, larger events in the world threaten to take them away before they can actually begin. There’s a lot more going on than meets the eye, and by the time we find out what’s going on, we find out, in the grandest Scary Movie tradition, how little of it makes sense.

The thing about Scary Movie 3 is that it’s probably the biggest of the series so far, even beating out Scary Movie 4. Any time you bring in Leslie Nielsen to a comedy title, well, you know you’re going for full on over the top. However, in their rush to take refuge in sheer audacity, they lost a lot of what was good about the previous two, notably the depth of parody (this one seemed lighter), and the jokes (lighter here too, it seemed). Still, it’s not without its laughs, just not near so many as you might expect.

Lastly, The Crow takes us out to a world that seems significantly Darker and Edgier than our own–thank you TV Tropes for coining that wonder of a concept–and nudges a bit toward the Crapsack. As a rock star and his fiancee were killed by a gang of thugs, the rock star returns from the dead, aided and abetted by a crow who keeps his spirit tethered to the mortal plane. Kill the crow, and by extension, you kill The Crow. And while The Crow is up and operating, there’s going to be plenty of killing to go around.

If you were around when this movie first came out, you know a whole lot of disaffected high-school loners went totally bughouse nuts over this movie, and as a history lesson (or if you just want to remember what all the fuss was about), you’ll be able to get it in full digital remastering. And yes, this is indeed Brandon Lee’s last film, as he was killed in an on-set accident involving a prop handgun. The end result is rather gritty and stylized, but the story itself is actually pretty well done if you don’t mind a colossal downer in the middle of your day.

So there you go, a fresh set of three titles that ought to put a little extra jump in your Halloween viewing.

Another exciting bit comes our way from the crew out at Bloody Disgusting, who sent over a copy of Atrocious in their Bloody Disgusting Selects line for us to review. And Atrocious promises to be a pretty good piece indeed as it’s one of my personal favorite subclasses–a found footage title. It’s not going to be without its problems, but it will manage to deliver the scares in a reasonably believable fashion. You’re not going to be able to get your hands on this one until this Tuesday, but when you do, you’ll be in for a somewhat flawed treat.

Atrocious joins us up with Cristian and July Quintanilla, a brother and sister who have gone out to their family’s summer home in a bid to investigate a local legend while spending time with the family on vacation. But what they’ll find in the midst of their investigation is a whole lot more dangerous than they ever dreamed.

I admit that Atrocious did do a terrific job of building tension, mostly because I had nary a clue just when something was going to happen, or just what we’d see from one moment to the next. The problem here, is that they didn’t do a whole lot to release all that tension for about the first forty minutes. This wouldn’t be too terrible except that the movie has a run time of just seventy four minutes. You lose four sevenths of a movie to boredom and you’re going to have to do some bang-up stuff on the back end to keep things worthwhile.

Thankfully, Atrocious delivers that bang-up on the back end. Oh, does it ever. Frankly, the last twenty minutes or so of this thing are going to be patently monstrous. It’s just amazing stuff, actually, and that’s something. The entire first half of this movie does not so much as hint at the aggressive, terrifying roller coaster that the last half will soon become. It’s going to hit you from out of nowhere, and while there’s plenty of appeal in something like that, it doesn’t exactly bode well for the folks who like coherent narratives.

Still though, it’s a pretty impressive piece of footage, and you’re likely going to enjoy it if you want a horror movie that will give you a few good jump scares.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Atrocious an eight out of ten for putting on a great show, even if it takes its sweet time getting the real horror action started. A decent addition to most any Halloween horror lineup, Atrocious should do a nice job of scaring you.

MobileWhack is sponsoring a giveaway of Atrocious if you are interested in winning a copy of the DVD.

Well folks, with Halloween rapidly approaching, and the prime season for horror in general along with it, I figured it would be a good time to take a rundown of five great titles you may not have heard of. And why have you never heard of them? Because they’re old enough to drink. We’re going to check out the top five horror movies of the 1980s.

5. Clownhouse

A little known title, and an early Victor Salva besides, Clownhouse pitted three brothers, home alone, against a set of three homicidal clowns. The film itself was good enough for three, as it brought in a lot of great suspense. There’s a reason some called this Home Alone with killer clowns, and this combination should be horror enough for most anyone.

4. Leviathan

Combine a monster movie with the claustrophobic horror of being several hundred feet under the surface of the ocean, and you’ve got a great idea of what you’ll be dealing with in Leviathan. It’s got science fiction and horror elements all at the same time, and bringing the two of them together in one convenient package makes it well worth adding to any horror watching party. Add in a great cast like Peter Weller (better known as Robocop) and Daniel Stern, and that’s just icing on the cake.

3.  Monkey Shines

One of George Romero’s lesser known non-zombie titles, Monkey Shines brought out a terrific combination of claustrophobic horror (most of it took place in a house with a quadriplegic guy) and the sheer bizarrity of a monkey who develops not only supreme empathy, but also a stalkerish love for said quadriplegic whom she’s been assigned to serve as a helper monkey. Though it was a box office flop, it took on cult status, and was plenty scary, especially the nice little jump scare they throw in at the end.

2. Evil Dead 2

It’s not hard to pass up a shot of one of the greatest cult films ever made, Evil Dead 2. More than a match for Evil Dead, though not quite as much fun as Army of Darkness, Evil Dead 2 not only brings in some good old fashioned scares with a whole lot of demons running around the back woods, but also brings in a whole load of funny. The possessed furniture scene alone is worth the cost of admission.

1. Scarecrows

A personal favorite of mine, Scarecrows pits a group of paramilitary bank robbers against a field full of surprisingly sneaky stuffed scarecrows. And despite that alliteration, it’s actually much more suspenseful than you think. Not only do the thieves pack some night vision, but there’s even a nice B-story in which one of the thieves actually tries to cheat the rest. Couple these together and you’re looking at some prime horror.

And there you have it–five great horror flicks you may not have heard of, straight out of the big-hair eighties. Should make for some great Halloween–or after–nights to come.

We’ve gotten a few requests from the readership for hitting up more movies faster, and as such, we’ve set up a gigantic sort of multi-review, in which we hit up a block of three titles, a little older stuff, to give you a fast look at some of the stuff you may have missed out there. This week’s big old multi-review is brought to you entirely by Lions Gate, who shipped out copies of Dead Alive, Mimic and The Others for us to review.

Dead Alive offers up the story of a terminal momma’s boy who’s about to get a serious shot of growing up when he meets an attractive young woman and fends off a horde of zombies caused by a Sumatran rat monkey infected with some kind of crazy zombie germ.

Basically, Dead Alive is terrific stuff. Not only does it present a lot of bombastic zombie killing action (the part with the lawn mower blows me away every time), but also plenty of laughs. This is excellent stuff for most any crazy party, especially given that we’ve got Halloween coming up on us in rapid fashion.

The Others, meanwhile, managed to give us twisty ending right around the same time M. Night Shyamalan was actually doing it well, by bringing us Nicole Kidman as a prim British matriarch with two children with a wicked light allergy. She’s hired on a new staff of domestics to help out while her husband is away, but they’ve arrived in the midst of some strange things. And once we find out just what’s going on in the house, well, it’s going to really catch you off guard.

The Others, frankly, still stands as one of the great examples of paranormal suspense filmmaking there is out there today. With an ending that may not be conclusive but is a huge surprise, and plenty of good shocks throughout the movie, this is one that will really put a spark in a long, cold fall night.

Lastly, we have Mimic, a movie that will make sure you never look at roaches the same way again. Some genetic engineers, in a bid to defeat a horrible disease, have created something that just may cure it. But they may have traded one doom for another, as their creation takes on a life of its own.

Mimic is a strange sort of title, with an odd sort of light dystopia running through it. It’s interesting enough, to watch one kind of doom get traded for another, and the end result is a little confused but otherwise pretty nicely done.

So there you go, a block of three pretty sweet horror titles that will do a nice job of perking up one of those cold dark nights we’ve got coming up here. Obviously some are better than others, but still, the whole will prove to be solidly done.

Something special for you today, folks–you’re not going to be able to get hands on this one until Tuesday, so settle in with us so we can fill you in. We’ve got a movie called The Sylvian Experiments today, and the folks out at Lions Gate sent a copy over for us to review for you. And while this won’t be the best movie we’ve seen in a while, it’s going to represent something much more important, and still provide a worthwhile show in the process.

The Sylvian Experiments follows a neuron scientist and her husband who, while in the basement of an old hospital, find a 16 mm film print. And when they go to see what’s on it, they discover that someone was staging experiments into the Sylvian fissure of the human brain in a bid to access something called the “forbidden territory”, a realm between life and death. And now, the neuron scientist has decided to take up the gauntlet dropped with this 16 mm film print and begin her own exploratory surgery. Her guinea pigs of choice? Her own daughters.

It’s reasonable to assume that this will not end well. In fact, what caught me most by surprise on this one was the trailers before the movie began–a whole slew of old, like five or ten years old, Japanese horror flicks. It proved later just why all these old trailers were running; as it turns out, The Sylvian Experiments is a rare treat indeed, the resurgence of a line that I had thought long since dead: the Lions Gate J-horror importing system. For background’s sake, after The Grudge (the remake of the Japanese film Ju-On) hit theaters, there was a bit of a surge in Japanese horror. People wanted to see what else these guys could bring out, and so we got stuff like Infection, Isola, Premonition, St. John’s Wort, and a host of other titles under various banners going direct to video in the United States but having survived Japanese theaters.

As I discovered after watching several of these, there are really only two kinds of Japanese horror film: the bombastic, thundering nightmare with loads of kills and action, and the chatty, slow sludgefest. Most Japanese horror fits into one of these two, and this one falls into the chatty and slow pile, though admittedly, it does do a reasonably good job of building suspense. Thankfully, unlike many slow and chatty Japanese horror titles, it also has some moments in which that tension gets released. Not the best releases, of course–they’re very subtle in the normal Japanese style–but they’re still releases of tension all the same.

Still though, as someone who deeply missed the crap shoot that was Japanese horror importing, I was glad to see The Sylvian Experiments, and more than ready to give them a try. The end result could have been better, but it was still relatively welcome nonetheless.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives The Sylvian Experiments a seven out of ten–it’s not the best movie you’ll see, but if you’re a fan of subtlety in your horror, it’s definitely worth a rental if nothing else.

Anchor Bay has long since earned my respect for putting out a fantastic lineup of mostly high quality stuff. Sure, they’ve had a clunker or two along the way–who hasn’t?–but for the most part, when I find Anchor Bay horror in my inbox, well, I go after it. And that’s just what I got with a copy of Super Hybrid, which they sent out for me to review.

Super Hybrid takes us out to Chicago, where a mysterious driverless car is on the loose. Possessing the ability to transform itself into other vehicles and lure the unwary into climbing in. Once they do, it devours its own occupants. And now, it’s been towed into a police impound lot, where it proceeds to carry on with its murder spree. Can the night shift of secretaries, mechanics and assorted personnel manage to junk the homicidal ride? Or will this car get away clean?

I have to hand it to these guys–the last time I heard a plot even vaguely similar to this was Christine, and in all honesty, Christine never actually ate anybody. And there is just a bit of similarity between this and a title from the Fangoria Frightfest lineup called Road Kill, but even that’s a bit tenuous at best. This is something of a unique title, and frankly, nothing impresses me quite so much as a unique movie. Now, of course, uniqueness alone isn’t enough to carry the day, but it does go a long way. The only question left: can this perform sufficiently in the execution of its unique idea to be worth watching?

The answer, at least for the most part, is yes. A quite thoroughly resounding yes, as a matter of fact. It does a delightful job of building, and regularly releasing, tension, which is always a plus for any good horror movie.

About the only thing I object to is that they kind of tipped their hand a little early on, showing us the exact nature of the car within the first half hour. However, it did pave the way some pretty nice horror-action hybrid stuff going on, and that’s well worth our time to watch.  Anchor Bay has once again put out a nice quality piece of hardware.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, gives Anchor  Bay’s terrific Super Hybrid an eight out of ten–it’s not perfect, but it’s very watchable. A great blend of horror, action, and just a little bit of sci-fi monster movie thrown in for variety, Super Hybrid does a terrific job.

So the folks out at Lions Gate sent over a copy of Hyenas for us to check out today, and it’s always worth keeping an eye on Lions Gate going after the direct to video horror market. Sometimes it turns out better than others, and this time, sadly, is one of the others.

Hyenas follows a family man named Gannon whose family was murdered one night. He’s not taking it well at all, which really isn’t much of a surprise, but while talking to the town’s hunter, he discovers that there’s a breed of horrors out there that rival even the horror of losing your family. And this particular breed may have had something to do with the loss of his family. So now, he and the hunter head out to put paid to the horrors themselves, before they can do any more damage.

It surprised me quite a bit to find Costas Mandylor in here, especially considering how busy the shooting season was for the Saw series (Costas Mandylor, in case you didn’t already know, was thoroughly fantastic as Detective Hoffman), but he does do a very effective job as Gannon.

The trouble here is one of plot, actually.  See, Hyenas is actually something of a misnomer. They’re actually WERE-hyenas, which is almost the same thing except it’s significantly more stupid.

Perhaps the worst part about Hyenas is that it’s not just stupid, it’s also boring. Deeply, deeply boring. You can see the end plot twist coming from a distance of several miles, and frankly, there’s really nothing going on in here that hasn’t already been done in any of a dozen other movies, and done better to boot.

The effects are low rent to say the least, and that really only adds insult to injury. But when we get a couple small sideplots about rival gangs of teenagers in a small town that doesn’t do much except give a couple characters who will be important later something to do, that’s about the crowning glory of this film’s sheer godawful.

That’s the down side of direct to video horror–it often doesn’t turn out anywhere near as well as we’d like, and that’s just what you’ll get with Hyenas, a whole lot of wasted opportunities couched in direct to video horror. It’s often, oddly enough, the case with direct to video horror in the werewolf vein, and though this isn’t werewolves–this is werehyenas–it’s still a pretty big disaster.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Hyenas a three out of ten; it’s a low-rent exercise in were-things gone kind of amok, and a presentation that doesn’t do anything neither new nor better than has already been done elsewhere.

This is one I’ve been waiting to talk about for some time now. It’s one of the final three releases from the newest round of After Dark Originals, and it’s called The Task. The folks out at Lions Gate sent out a copy of The Task for us to review, and I’ve been looking forward to it since the first I heard about it. The only one I’m looking forward to more than this one is Re-Kill, and hopefully we’ll be getting that one in later on too.

The Task, meanwhile, follows a new kind of reality show in which players find themselves stuck in an abandoned prison. But if they can survive the night, cash prizes await them. So when six college students find themselves competing in The Task, they’re pretty excited about the opportunity to make some big money for one night in an empty prison. But as they go throughout their night, they discover the prison isn’t as empty as they thought it was. And what’s waiting for them in there may well get them all killed.

It’s an interesting premise, and I’ve long been of the mind that more horror needs to have a reality show theme. Frankly, reality shows are only about a step or two removed from being horror movies anyway, so why not go all the way.

They do some nice spooky bits here; for instance, stay on edge when you see the adorable bunny go hopping along, because it’s going to get downright unnerving. Especially if you’re a coulrophobe. But that’s as far as we go with that one.

The actual play mechanics of The Task are almost identical to MTV’s old game show, Fear, though significantly more will happen on The Task than MTV’s mostly tepid little game show could bring out. It will be a bit over the top in some places, and a bit disjointed in others, but one thing is abundantly clear: this will easily be one of the biggest, baddest parts of the After Dark Originals line yet. Maybe Re-Kill can top it, I don’t know, but even if it can’t, this is going to make a spectacular second place finisher.

And in the grandest tradition, there will even be a twist ending…a multiple twist ending, in all honesty, which is the kind of thing I’ve come to expect from After Dark Originals fare by now.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives The Task a nine out of ten, with only a few disjointed and poorly realized parts standing between it and absolute perfection. What is here is excellent, though, just not quite perfect.

Before I begin today’s piece, yes, I assure you that “Dinocroc Vs. Supergator” is an actual movie. How do I know? The folks out at Anchor Bay sent over a copy for me to review for you guys. It’s part of the vein of modern-day monster movies from Roger Corman that keep landing on SyFy of late, and much like the other launches, it’s not exactly Oscar material, but it’s reasonably entertaining monster movie mayhem that will prove to be fun.

Dinocroc Vs. Supergator takes us out to an island in the middle of nowhere, where a biotech firm is putting together the finishing touches on its newest creations, the titular Dinocroc and Supergator. And when Dinocroc escapes the lab, heading for populated areas, the firm figures the only way it’s going to stop the inbound menace that’s about to subject them to a whole load of personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits is to release Supergator to hunt and kill the menace down. Nothing like making a bad situation worse, huh? Now it’s down to a handful of folks–a Cajun hunter, a Fish and Game representative, and an undercover investigator to try and halt both of the massive monsters before it’s too late.

Interestingly, much of the SyFy monster movie lineup in previous releases has not proven to be as godawful as its titling and special effects would suggest. And it’s certainly helped that this is one of the last movies to feature David Carradine–that sweet shout-out to the great classics certainly can’t hurt.

Sure, this is another low budget monster movie romp, heavy on the CG monstrosities, but it’s still worth watching, especially if you’re big on the monster movie subgenre. There isn’t much here that’s straining the disbelief too hard–one big crocodile, one big alligator, getting briefly out of control and lunching up some folks before a brawl–and the scenery is absolutely beautiful. It’s really pretty worthwhile stuff, and great for a friendly get together as long as you don’t mind chucking a little popcorn at the screen or engaging in mockery in the grandest Mystery Science Theater style.

And no, I’m not going to spoiler for you, but let’s just say that there will be an actual, clear winner in the titular fight. Dinocroc or Supergator WILL have a clear winner…if not necessarily for very long. I know, that’s a downright tease, but the end result will be surprisingly satisfying.

It may be low budget, it may be less than perfect, but with results like these, it’s still decent stuff. And the Screenhead Ten Scale offers up the normal score for decent fare, a seven out of ten, making it well worth watching if you like this sort of thing.